The tale of Hansel and Gretel makes one think about "food", both in a literal and in a figurative sense. The story begins in hunger and the desire for food and plays out with the children gorging themselves on a gingerbread house and then being captured by a witch who wants to gorge herself on them! Essentially, the entire story can be built around this "food" theme and the quest for sustenance.
Think about it – a family who is starving, children abandoned because they cannot be fed, the children coming upon a house made of gingerbread and sweets, which they voraciously begin to devour in their famished state, a witch who first feeds them to fatten them up and then wants to devour the children, and finally an oven that ends up cooking a witch instead of the children - the prevalence of hunger and desire for sustenance in the tale is palatable (pardon the pun). The critic Bruno Bettelheim describes the tale as a child's quest to overcome his dependence, oral greed, and destructive desires. On a symbolic level, these are struggles that every child must undergo as he/she matures.
The child can become successful once he/she has mastered and can control these excessive desires. However, it appears that some individuals never learn such a lesson. Take for instance Armin Miewes. He is a real life German "cannibal" who attributes the beginnings of his cannibalistic aspirations to the popular Hansel and Gretel tale, which his mother would read to him as a child. After cannibalizing a willing victim he found over the Internet (He has been quoted as saying, 'You wouldn't believe how many Hansels are whizzing around the Internet"), he was sentenced to life in prison in Germany.
What a story! I cannot help but wonder: Didn't Armin listen to the ending of the tale? He seems to have missed entirely the point of the story. To me, the Hansel and Gretel story warns of the dangers of the extremes- deprivation (hunger, starvation) and excess (gorging, cannibalism). Once the children are able to overcome both of these extremes, they go on to live happy and contented lives.
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